Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday has arrived armed with declarations of national peril, institutional catastrophe, and - most improbably - a reformed rock musician. The corridors of power tremble, the antipodes receive their most commercially minded visitors, and a gentleman who once scorned an honour now wishes to bring flowers and apologise. Your column awaits.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday brings a most remarkable assortment of affairs - legislation slipped quietly past sleeping parliamentarians, school kitchens stripped of their guilty pleasures, and a gentleman from the Northern Province who has just done something in the golfing world that only three men before him have ever managed. This Author has opinions on all of it, and very little patience for those who do not.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings diplomatic collapse, five hundred arrests before the church bells have ceased ringing, and one very remarkable horse reminding us all what greatness looks like. This Author has barely had time to finish her third cup of tea before the world demanded comment, and she shall not disappoint.